But politics has played a visible role in this conversation. In 2020, Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells said in response to the phrase “rightwing extremism” that “there are many people of conservative background who take exception with being charred with the same brush”. Nonetheless, the clear content of Asio’s public communication in 2020 set a foundation for an inquiry into extremism and radicalisation currently before Australia’s Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. The proposed inquiry had a focus on the extreme right, but that suggestion touched another third rail which led to the inquiry eventually focusing on extremism in general, which is still a worthwhile endeavour.

When a bill condemning extremism was put to the Senate in February, it was amended to remove references to the extreme right and to first notethat Australia is one of the most successful multicultural countries on Earth.

Australia’s success in multiculturalism is an enduring notion that should not be taken for granted in the face of multicultural Australia’s lived experience: the Lowy Institute this month reported that in the context of the pandemic, one in five Chinese Australians have been physically threatened or attacked because of their heritage. Last week, a study from Charles Sturt University revealed that 58% of mosques in Australia had their worshippers or building experience targeted violence between 2014 and 2019, when the Christchurch attack occurred. In February, the Scanlon Foundation found 37% of Australians indicate a negative view towards those who follow Islam.

For many in Australia’s Muslim community, Asio’s shifting signal comes after two painful decades where many of our leaders and influential commentators have taken every opportunity to declare that they were not afraid to take on Islamic extremism or Islamists. They told us we have to call it out for what it is. And they demanded impossible feats of our country’s Muslim community leaders. Leaders like Labor MP Ed Husic who last week recalled constantly being asked to condemn Islamic extremism “louder, stronger, and more regularly”. Those mechanisms of Australian political discourse have been set at a constant hum and ratcheted up to a roar in the wake of almost every terror incident.

A fortnight ago, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief again outlined how these kinds of responses have securitised the global Muslim community and have created an imagined construct that has been used to justify hostility and violence. This construct has been central to the foundation on which many strains of ideological extremism in Australia rest. Regardless of exactly where, when, or how the Australian Christchurch shooter was radicalised, the influence of Australia’s damaging discourse about Islam and immigration has been inescapable for too long.